Fifth Queen

Ford Ford Madox

Description

Katharine Howard was the fifth wife of England's Henry VIII and the second of his wives to be executed. Ford Madox Ford's fictionalized account of their courtship and marriage in the Fifth Queen trilogy is regarded as one of the best historical romance series of the twentieth century. The first book in the triology, The Fifth Queen recounts Katharine's arrival at court and the early stages of her relationship with the king.

Sujets

• Historical fiction

Informations

• Publié par: The Floating Press
• Date de parution: 01 juillet 2014
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781776580071
• Langue: English

Extrait

THE FIFTH QUEEN
AND HOW SHE CAME TO COURT
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FORD MADOX FORD
 
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The Fifth Queen And How She Came to Court First published in 1906 Epub ISBN 978-1-77658-007-1 Also available: PDF ISBN 978-1-77658-008-8 © 2014 The Floating Press and its licensors. All rights reserved. While every effort has been used to ensure the accuracy and reliability of the information contained in The Floating Press edition of this book, The Floating Press does not assume liability or responsibility for any errors or omissions in this book. The Floating Press does not accept responsibility for loss suffered as a result of reliance upon the accuracy or currency of information contained in this book. Do not use while operating a motor vehicle or heavy equipment. Many suitcases look alike. Visit www.thefloatingpress.com
Contents
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Part One - The Coming I II III IV V VI VII Part Two - The House of Eyes I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX Part Three - The King Moves I II III IV
Part One - The Coming
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I
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Magister Nicholas Udal, the Lady Mary's pedagogue, was very hungry andvery cold. He stood undecided in the mud of a lane in the AustinFriars. The quickset hedges on either side were only waist high anddid not shelter him. The little houses all round him of white daubwith grey corner beams had been part of the old friars' stables andoffices. All that neighbourhood was a maze of dwellings and gardens,with the hedges dry, the orchard trees bare with frost, the arbourswintry and deserted. This congregation of small cottages was like apatch of common that squatters had taken; the great house of the LordPrivy Seal, who had pulled down the monastery to make room for it, wasa central mass. Its gilded vanes were in the shape of men at arms, andtore the ragged clouds with the banners on their lances. Nicholas Udallooked at the roof and cursed the porter of it.
'He could have given me a cup of hypocras,' he said, and muttered, asa man to whom Latin is more familiar than the vulgar tongue, ahexameter about 'pocula plena.'
He had reached London before nine in one of the King's barges thatcame from Greenwich to take musicians back that night at four. He hadbreakfasted with the Lady Mary's women at six off warm small beer andfresh meat, but it was eleven already, and he had spent all his moneyupon good letters.
He muttered: ' Pauper sum, pateor, fateor, quod Di dant fero ,' but itdid not warm him.
The magister had been put in the Lady Mary's household by the LordPrivy Seal, and he had a piece of news as to the Lady's means oftreasonable correspondence with the Emperor her uncle. He had imaginedthat the news—which would hurt no one because it was imaginary—mightbe worth some crowns to him. But the Lord Privy Seal and all hissecretaries had gone to Greenwich before it was light, and there wasnothing there for the magister.
'You might have known as much, a learned man,' the porter had snarledat him. 'Isn't the new Queen at Rochester? Would our lord bide here?Didn't your magistership pass his barge on the river?'
'Nay, it was still dark,' the magister answered. The porter sniffedand slammed to the grating in the wicket. Being of the Old Faith hehated those Lutherans—or those men of the New Learning—that itpleased his master to employ.
Udal hesitated before the closed door; he hesitated in the lane beyondthe corner of the house. Perhaps there would be no barges at thesteps—no King's barges. The men of the Earl Marshal's service, beingPapists, would pelt him with mud if he asked for a passage; even theProtestant lords' men would jeer at him if he had no pence forthem—and he had none. He would do best to wait for the musicians'barge at four.
Then he must eat and shelter—and find a wench. He stood in the mud:long, thin, brown in his doctor's gown of fur, with his black flappedcap that buttoned well under his chin and let out his brown, lean,shaven and humorous face like a woodpecker's peering out of a hole ina tree.
The volumes beneath his arms were heavy: they poked out his gown oneach side, and the bitter cold pinched his finger ends as if they hadbeen caught in a door. The weight of the books pleased him for therewas much good letters there—a book of Tully's epistles for himselfand two volumes of Plautus' comedies for the Lady Mary. But what amonghis day's purchases pleased him most was a medallion in silver he hadbought in Cheapside. It showed on the one side Cupid in his sleep andon the other Venus fondling a peacock. It was a heart-compelling giftto any wench or lady of degree.
He puckered up his deprecatory and comical lips as he imagined thatthat medal would purchase him the right to sigh dolorously in front ofwhatever stomacher it finally adorned. He could pour out odes in thelearned tongue, for the space of a week, a day, or an afternoonaccording to the rank, the kindness or the patience of the recipient.
Something invisible and harsh touched his cheek. It might have beensnow or hail. He turned his thin cunning face to the clouds, and theythreatened a downpour. They raced along, like scarves of vapour, solow that you might have thought of touching them if you stood ontiptoe.
If he went to Westminster Hall to find Judge Combers, he would get hisbelly well filled, but his back wet to the bone. At the corner of thenext hedge was the wicket gate of old Master Grocer Badge. There themagister would find at least a piece of bread, some salt and warmedmead. Judge Combers' wife was easy and bounteous: but old John Badge'sdaughter was a fair and dainty morsel.
He licked his full lips, leered to one side, muttered, 'A curse on alllords' porters,' and made for John Badge's wicket. Badge's dwellinghad been part of the monastery's curing house. It had some good roomsand two low storeys—but the tall garden wall of the Lord Privy Sealhad been built against its side windows. It had been done without wordor warning. Suddenly workmen had pulled down old Badge's pigeon house,set it up twenty yards further in, marked out a line and set up thishigh wall that pressed so hard against the house end that there wasbarely room for a man to squeeze between. The wall ran for half amile, and had swallowed the ground of twenty small householders. Butnever a word of complaint had reached the ears of the Privy Seal otherthan through his spies. It was, however, old Badge's ceaseless grief.He had talked of it without interlude for two years.
*
The Badges' room—their houseplace—was fair sized, but so low ceiledthat it appeared long, dark and mysterious in the winter light Therewas a tall press of dark wood with a face minutely carved and frettedto represent the portal of Amiens Cathedral, and a long black table,littered with large sheets of printed matter in heavy black type, thatdiffused into the cold room a faint smell of ink. The old man satquavering in the ingle. The light of the low fire glimmered on hissilver hair, on his black square cap two generations old; and, in hisold eyes that had seen three generations of changes, it twinkledstarrily as if they were spinning round. In the cock forward of hisshaven chin, and the settling down of his head into his shoulders,there was a suggestion of sinister and sardonic malice. He wasmuttering at his son:
'A stiff neck that knows no bending, God shall break one day.'
His son, square, dark, with his sleeves rolled up showing immensemuscles developed at the levers of his presses, bent his black beardand frowned his heavy brows above his printings.
'Doubtless God shall break His engine when its work is done,' hemuttered.
'You call Privy Seal God's engine?' the old man quavered ironically.'Thomas Cromwell is a brewer's drunken son. I know them that have seenhim in the stocks at Putney not thirty years ago.'
The printer set two proofs side by side on the table and frowninglycompared them, shaking his head.
'He is the flail of the monks,' he said abstractedly. 'They would haveburned me and thousands more but for him.'
'Aye, and he has put up a fine wall where my arbour stood.'
The printer took a chalk from behind his ear and made a score down hispage.
'A wall,' he muttered; 'my Lord Privy Seal hath set up a wall againstpriestcraft all round these kingdoms—'
'Therefore you would have him welcome to forty feet of my garden?'the old man drawled. 'He pulls down other folks' crucifixes and setsup his own walls with other folks' blood for mortar.'
The printer said darkly:
'Papists' blood.'
The old man pulled his nose and glanced down.
'We were all Papists in my day. I have made the pilgrimage toCompostella, for all you mock me now.'
He turned his head to see Magister Udal entering the door furtivelyand with eyes that leered round the room. Both the Badges fell intosudden, and as if guilty, silence.
' Domus parva, quies magna ,' the magister tittered, and swept acrossthe rushes in his furs to rub his hands before the fire. 'When shall Iteach your Margot the learned tongues?'
'When the sun sets in the East,' the printer muttered.
Udal sent to him over his shoulder, as words of consolation:
'The new Queen is come to Rochester.'
The printer heaved an immense sigh:
'God be praised!'
Udal snickered, still over his shoulder:
'You see, neither have the men of the Old Faith put venom in her food,nor have the Emperor's galleys taken her between Calais and Sandwich.'
'Yet she comes ten days late.'
'Oh moody and suspicious artificer. Afflavit deus! The wind hathblown dead against Calais shore this ten days.'
The old man pulled his long white nose:
'In my day we could pray to St Leonard for a fair wind.'
He was too old to care whether the magister reported his words toThomas Cromwell, the terrible Lord Privy Seal, and too sardonic tokeep silence for long about the inferiority of his present day.
'When shall I teach the fair Margot the learned tongue?' Udal askedagain.
'When wolves teach conies how to play on pipes,' the master printersnarled from his chest.
'The Lord Privy Seal never stood higher,' Udal said. 'The m